


come up to my motel room, save my life

by Unchained_Daisychain



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Depression, Early 70s, Emotional Hurt, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Songfic, Stranger Sex, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:35:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28503093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unchained_Daisychain/pseuds/Unchained_Daisychain
Summary: John is a struggling musician preparing to take his own life when an unexpected visitor decides to take something else from him instead.Inspired by: "Motel Blues" - Loudon Wainwright III-Tonight John was performing what was sure to be his final set in the pub. Or anywhere, in that case, unless whatever lies beyond this plane of existence will be one grand stage. The faces in the audience were becoming too familiar, and all the while, his own was hollowing into an unrecognizable shell before his very eyes in the smudged mirrors. The merry-go-round was spinning too fast. The limp-bodied projection from his metal horse had been a long time coming.
Relationships: John Lennon & Paul McCartney, John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	come up to my motel room, save my life

**Author's Note:**

> TW: more angst-heavy and with references to suicide, so please don't read if this content upsets you
> 
> didn't plan on writing this, but inspiration came when I was in a not so good place the other night. thanks for reading and commenting ♡

The razor blade glints on the counter top like a sheet of silver snow. The world is always still and pristine after a freshly fallen snow, a blackboard wiped clean. With the water stagnating behind him, he considers phoning Mimi to hear her voice once more, or Cyn, to tie up all of those loose ends. But he can’t risk a change of heart.

When spontaneity dictates much of his life so staunchly, it’s laughable to consider procrastination his savior now. He swims his fingertips through the drawn bath, gone tepid from his hesitation.  _ There’s always tomorrow…. _

No sooner does the thought settle than a pounding on his motel room door causes his heart to sink so rapidly he swears it a stone that breaks the water’s tension. Unsure of whether it’s relief or frustration that ratchets through his system, he goes to the door. On the opposite side of it stands a familiar figure, yet still perplexing to see.

“Blind Willie McTell,” the bloke from the pub blurts in lieu of a greeting.

After watching John’s regularly scheduled set onstage, the young, angelic face had treated him to idle conversation over pints: 

_ “‘This machine smells,’” he had read from the Guthrie-inspired decal on John’s guitar. “Like a hound dog for Communists?” _

_ “More like I haven’t washed it in a couple months.” _

For once he hadn’t felt so hopelessly alone in the world. Of all genres at their disposal, they spoke most of the blues. John thinks it’s been a feeling hibernating in his soul as much as it’s been a color staining his jeans. And when you wear the very thing you carry, it’s virtually impossible not to bring up. Even to a complete stranger.

Paul. Paul was his name. And a name can seem so generic until it’s the last one you ever expect to hear again. 

But now John blinks at him as though seeing him for the first time. “What?”

“Blind Willie McTell, he’s the one we couldn’t think of at the pub.”

“Oh…right.” 

The realization arrives but with none of the enthusiasm he had hoped would follow. Within the span of two hours, a lapse in memory that weighed overbearingly on his mind has become but a triviality. John almost longs for that moment of insignificant urgency.

“Sorry,” Paul smiles self-consciously, “but I wasn’t gonna be able to sleep tonight till I remembered.”

Nodding perfunctorily, he moves to shut him, and the interruption he has presented, out of the room. “You should be all set now then.”

“Er, well”—the toe of his boot wedges between the door and rubber seal—“not to be a bother, but could I use the bog? Wasn’t gonna be able to piss till I remembered either, it seems”

John’s gut wrenches when he thinks about his preparations in that room and the blackboard not yet scrubbed clean. He has nothing to be ashamed of yet, though, does he? The shame and sin of it all are only married to the commitment. 

Without a word, he grants the younger man entrance.

A grateful nod and whiff of scotch breeze past him as he strides to the loo. John swallows a lump that tastes oddly reminiscent of the courage he experienced, if for but a fleeting moment, when he initially had considered inviting Paul to his room for his companionship. He hadn’t needed the sex or the even the conversation for that matter. He had merely needed the company—craved it like a salve despite knowing the wound would fester as soon as its treatment left. It’s pathetic, really.

“Finally givin’ that guitar of yours a wash, eh?” Paul calls over a steady stream of urine.

Assuming he’s referencing the full bath, he mutters, “Somethin’ like that.”

“Y’know, I can’t get that little tune o’ yours outta me head.” After a noisy flush he reenters the stale room John has called home over the last eight months. “That ‘help’ one, you write that?”

He tucks a leg beneath himself on the edge of the bed and hums in confirmation around an unlit cigarette.

“Ever thought about speedin’ it up?”

“What for?”

Lazily he shrugs a shoulder like the suggestion is foreign even to himself. “For the contradiction of it? You don’t so much hear people  _ whisperin’ _ for help as you do shoutin’ for it.”

“Or maybe yer just not listening,” John challenges through a squint of smoke.

The man’s eyes illuminate like a paper lantern, innocence its own hue amongst the hazel. His lips curl in resemblance to hooks eager to pry open this enigma he discovered beneath the thrumming lights of a cheap motel bar. “So what are you, one of those Dylan, Cohen types?” he asks. “A poet who just so happens to be lucky enough to carry a tune?”

“I’m no one specific thing. Bit of this, a bit of that.”

“A little piece of everyone you meet?”

“You say that like it’s unoriginal.”

“Hardly. A personality is a personality no matter how you build it.”

John eyes him for a beat, drawing hard on his fag like maybe he can inhale some of that blind optimism along with the smoke. Only pessimism coils on his tongue when he finally responds, “How old did you say you were?”

Paul simpers. “I didn’t.”

No more than a teenager from the looks of it, but then John decides maybe he’s better off not knowing. Maybe Paul is wiser for not sharing.

“Anyroad,” the lad goes on, pocketing his hands in his leather coat, “I’ll be outta yer hair now. Nice chattin’ with you, an’ maybe I’ll catch you again tomorrow night if you’ll be on?”

Tonight John was performing what was sure to be his final set in the pub. Or anywhere, in that case, unless whatever lies beyond this plane of existence will be one grand stage. The faces in the audience were becoming too familiar, and all the while, his own was hollowing into an unrecognizable shell before his very eyes in the smudged mirrors. The merry-go-round was spinning too fast. The limp-bodied projection from his metal horse had been a long time coming. 

And yet:  _ there’s always tomorrow…. _

“What’s the rush?” John blurts, nearly surprising himself, until he realizes the water can’t get any colder nor the blade any duller. Trust him to find a way out of his way out.

“You want me to stay?”

At the quirk of his eyebrow, John shrugs noncommittally. He flicks a ball of ash to the grimey carpet and notes the hesitation in Paul’s eyes as he watches it flutter.

“I’d hate to get any sour looks from the clerks downstairs.”

“Well, lucky for you I don’t plan on invitin’ ‘em up.” With the chagrin from his vulnerability beginning to contort into frustration, he adds, “Look, if you stay, do it ‘cos you want to, not outta some sense of obligation.”

“I never do anything out of sense,” Paul responds with a cheeky smile fixed there by his lifting eyes. “That’s why I end up places like this, in these crummy motels with these drifters and dreamers.”

Hours earlier John had seemed so normal within that span of conversation—deadpan but no less sociable—that no one could have ever dreamed what fate awaited him upstairs in the dingy motel loo. But as it turns out, neither could he. 

A burdensome distraction sheer minutes ago, Paul now sits cross-legged on the floor with his back against the chestnut bureau. His face is fresh around these parts where the same tired hookers dwell and sloppy drunks loiter. And as he regales John with colorful explanations of how he himself ended up in a place so squalid and lonesome as this, he cannot help but silently ponder: _Did I give myself away?_ _Does some odor hang with me like it does this worn acoustic?_

It’s easy for him to accept any number of possibilities aside from the one that perhaps his life is worth saving. 

His mind eventually wanders back to the topic at hand when Paul confesses to his sticky fingers carrying him through much of his vagrant adventures. “I have a habit of taking things that don’t belong to me,” he divulges with an air of pride.

“Like a klepto,” John says in tandem with him classifying it as souveniring, and they laugh at the juxtapositional outlooks. From his elongated splay on the unmade bed, he eyes Paul through dark lashes. “Am I gonna regret inviting you to stay?”

“Nah, I think we can keep on good terms.”

He moves quietly in the dark, retaining John’s attention with his unpredictability. On hands and knees he crawls towards him at the foot of the bed. The shuffle of his faded jeans on the carpet is rivaled only by the thumping pulse in John’s ears. It seems to thunder from his lips in the breath that beats softly against Paul’s stubbled chin as he kneels to level himself with him on the bed.

Maybe this isn’t the form of company he initially sought, but he’s no novice to fleeting pleasures. And the kiss Paul teases against his scarlet mouth is the thrill of that first rush of brown sugar—that sweet release of suffering in a blood-stained bath. 

“Fuck,” John jerks away only slightly from their kiss, “you bit my tongue.”

The giggle pushed back into his mouth with a velvet tongue leaves him to wonder if it was inexperience or reprimand. Had Paul tasted on his breath that near brush of lips with death and shivered with jealousy? How pitiful he must think him. 

Brow knitted, John tucks his fingers into Paul’s dense locks and lures him from the floor with a desperation that screams,  _ you can take me instead. _

And if it’s only tonight, it’s one worth having.

The cars and traffic and lives of people too noble for rescue all sleep in the street while Paul fucks him in that cheap room like he knows that even if he lacks the strength to change John’s mind, he just might possess the touch. He ministers to him with a sensuality that gives “strangers” an ill-fitting name. The praises he hides in John’s skin like a shameful lyric, the stamps of approval he gives them with kisses: all of it instills validation within those tales Paul spoke of, because no lad could be so perceptive as him without a couple hundred miles etched in the soles of their feet.

Strangers, no; they’re denizens of hardship—sufferers of these killing-floor blues. They’re saving each other from themselves.

As he nears orgasm, blood seethes through John’s veins so profusely that it scares him to think how close he was to draining them altogether. Paul rocks into him with his fingertips buried in John’s pecs like the feeling runs two ways. He can barely remember what it means to be wanted. 

When they collapse against the sheets in a panting heap, his twenty-seven years of life settle on top of him with a weight lighter than before. Nosing the slick skin between his shoulder blades, Paul mimics the rate of his every breath. His nimble fingers trip over John’s ribcage, the skin a sheet of paper from years of unhealthy coping. 

All at once an emotion overpowers him so unshakably that he knows not whether to laugh or sob. The note. He’d forgotten to write the bloody note. Those apologies and explanations that someone, somewhere, would demand from him. In all of his meticulousness, he still fell short. And Christ, the feeling is such a low  _ low _ on the coattails of a blissful high.

In the end, it’s neither laughter nor tears he dissolves into, but the embrace of Paul’s half-naked body at his back, as though his curves and angles are the consoling words to the mourner within his own heart. 

“Will you still be here in the morning?” he speaks softly into the chilly room. 

“Will you?” Paul returns against the tender shell of his ear.

Afraid of the frailty of his voice, he shuts his eyes.

The next day only one of them keeps a word they never truly gave. John awakes to the patter of rain outside and a dull cranial ache comparable to a hangover with none of the drink. Maybe it’s all of the condemnation he never felt sitting on the rim of the tub.

It doesn’t take a cold indentation on the mattress to know he’s alone, but it doesn’t help to see it either. God, he doesn’t want to be alone. Not again—not this soon.

The rage is insidious and slow to grab hold but shakes him like a ragdoll once it does. Before he can even process it, he’s on his feet with blind fury and trashing the motel’s night table. A broad sweep of his arm casts the lamp and alarm clock to the floor. With little more to his name than the bits and bobs in these small confines, the only destructible thing left is himself. Perched naked on the edge of the bed, he buries his head in his hands. Blunt fingernails claw through his disheveled hair. So much violence in a touch that intimately knew love only hours before.

“Fuck you,” he grouses through clenched teeth, and repeats the words again and again until he finds himself their target instead of Paul.

Breathing harshly through his nose, the manic energy compels him to open the night table. He plunders through the drawer to check for his earnings from the night before—an income steadily dwindling over the weeks. Still there, though. Another frantic search ensures that his needles, elastic band, and smack are still in the safety of his duffel bag. Still there, all of it still there. 

What then would a self-professed kleptomaniac deem worthy of a “souvenir”?

_ The hopelessness of a man at the end of his rope, _ John decides cynically.

Through the muted light of a grey morning he shuffles to the bathroom, numb to the core. Rather than immediately face the reflection in the mirror, he blasts the rusted pipes and splashes his face at the sink. With no patience for the water to warm, he gets a taste of what would have awaited him last night.

Sighing heavily, he braces his hands against the counter. His stomach jolts. His entire body freezes. After a handful of seconds his eyes roll slowly to the top of his right hand and he lifts it from the counter. Nothing. Gone….

Incredulous, he exhales, “You cheeky prick.”

The only thing missing from his room besides the thief himself is the razor blade he left in the bathroom. The cold steel of it replaced by the warmth of a caring hand; the tub still filled to the brim but appearing so inexplicably empty. John’s head sags between his shoulders, dull air shuddering from his lips. He bites his tongue, the same sunken groove where Paul’s teeth nipped the night before, to draw blood instead of tears. And yet, they well in unison.


End file.
